[130] See Graham Wallas, Life of Francis Place.
[131] “Disappointment bitter and wide-spread was following closely upon the inevitable failure of the extravagant expectations and overheated hopes which the agitation for parliamentary reform had kindled.”—F. York Powell, The Queen’s Reign: a Survey.
[132] See Graham Wallas, Life of Francis Place.
[133] Herbert Paul, History of Modern England.
[134] Ibid.
[135] “Want of leaders and organization, and the great difference in objects among the Chartists themselves, led to their failure. For a while Chartism was stayed.”—Professor T. F. Tout, England from 1689.
[136] The differences between the two became more acute when Feargus O’Connor started his land colonization schemes a few years later. O’Brien opposed these schemes, which all ended in heavy financial losses, and urged sticking to political reform. From 1842 O’Brien was practically outside the Chartist movement, though it was not till 1848 he formally retired. He died in poverty in 1864, after giving some help to the middle-class radical movement for household suffrage.
[137] A similar impulse fifty years later brought “Labour Churches” into existence.
[138] “The ministers had met the Chartist outbreaks with strong, repressive measures, and here they had the concurrence of parliament, which had no sympathy with the movement. The House of Commons, indeed, had little understanding of the processes that were maturing outside its walls. The industrial and the social evolution went on almost unnoticed by statesmen and politicians absorbed in the party controversy.”—Sidney Low and Lloyd Sanders, Political History of England, 1837–1901. See also Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates for these years.
[139] “The least satisfactory feature of English life in 1846 was the condition of the labouring classes. Politically they were dumb, for they had no parliamentary votes. Socially they were depressed, though their lot had been considerably improved by an increased demand for labour and by the removal of taxes in Peel’s great Budget of 1842. That was the year in which the misery of the English proletariat reached its lowest depth.”—Herbert Paul, History of Modern England.